“It’s a nice look on you,” Noah says. “Like a broody unicorn. Love it.”
“Shush,” Blake says and leans in to kiss Noah.
“Wait a second,” Noah mutters before Blake can actually do it. “So, for the record… I’m not… let’s say I’m not the most experienced guy.”
“Okay.” Blake won’t lie, it’s not what he was expecting. He knows it’s not exactly easy to get into another guy’s pants when you’re a professional hockey player, but Noah struck him as someone who has all the experience in the world.
“Just… don’t be mad if I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” Noah says.
“Are you…” Blake tilts his head, not quite sure how to say a virgin without saying a virgin. “Have you ever done this?”
“I slept with my girlfriend when I was sixteen and then pretty quickly realized that sleeping with girls wasn’t actually my thing.”
“I see,” Blake says. “Hey, if you don’t want to–”
“No, see, the whole point of this is that I want to,” Noah says and grabs a fistful of Blake’s shirt. “So, you know, give me some directions along the way and we’re all good.”
Blake hesitates, only for a second, because they should spend a few more minutes talking about this to make sure that they’re really on the same page. Before he can say a word, Noah smiles at him and Blake kisses him and he’s clumsy about it, but then Noah makes a soft noise against his mouth and Blake forgets about the twinge in the pit of his stomach and it’s replaced by that swooping, falling feeling, Noah’s hands on his back, lips insistent, eager.
Noah pulls him down the hall with him, into his bedroom, pushes him onto his bed, and then hovers over him, his hair messy, like Blake had his fingers in there. He doesn’t remember, maybe he did.
“Okay,” Noah says, “what now?”
“Whatever you want.”
“That’s not helpful, Blake.”
“Uh, clothes off?”
“Okay,” Noah says and pulls off his shirt with enthusiasm. “Clothes off.”
Blake snorts. Maybe this wasn’t as terrible of an idea as he initially thought.
#
“Hey, you…”
“Hey,” Elliot says and it doesn’t come out as delighted as Natalie’s greeting. He’s cooking, because he didn’t know what else to do, and it looks like Natalie brought takeout, because Elliot didn’t tell her that he was cooking. Everything’s going wrong today.
Blake was a dick to him last night. They never fought, not about anything important, it was just bickering and quickly resolved misunderstandings, but this is bigger, this one hurt. Still hurts.
“Oh,” Natalie says when she drops her takeout bags on the counter, “I didn’t know–”
“Sorry, I should have called, I dug up this cookbook earlier and I wanted to try a recipe and now here we are…”
Elliot’s kitchen is a mess. Every surface is covered in pots and pans, some in use, some a little dirty because Elliot tried to use them and then realized they were too small. There’s food wrappers, spices, empty plastic bags, food that dropped out of pans that he hasn’t managed to clean up.
“Can I help?” Natalie asks.
“This is probably not edible,” Elliot mutters.
Natalie wraps her arms around him from behind and gives him a squeeze. “We’ll try it and if it’s really terrible, we’ll figure out what you can do better next time.”
He waves at his mess of a kitchen. “Are you suggesting that I should do all this again at some point in the future?”
“That’s usually how you learn how to do things,” Natalie says, amusement creeping into her voice. “You do it several times.”
“I know… It just wasn’t…”
“What?”
Elliot sighs. “This is stupid.”
Natalie’s arms disappear and she leans against the counter next to him. “So, I’m guessing there’s something else going on here and you definitely don’t have to tell me, but if I can help… even if it’s by cleaning up some of those pans, let me know, yeah?”
“I’m cooking because I’m stressed, I thought this was going to help, but now I’m even more stressed, because… look at this mess.”
Natalie’s fingers curl around his wrist. “It could be so much worse. Not that this isn’t a pretty impressive mess, but…” She reaches up to run her fingers through his hair.
Elliot sighs and leans into it. “I met an old friend last night and we fought. He… he said something that was… I don’t know… I probably shouldn’t be mad.”
Except he is, and it’s burning low in his stomach, even when he’s not thinking about it. Doesn’t help that he’s tired and maybe a little hungover.
“It’s okay to be angry. He clearly hurt you.”
“Yeah, but…” Elliot shrugs. He shouldn’t be as affected by this, they’ve barely been talking anyway. He thought that Blake wouldn’t be so ignorant, that he’d understand that this was as hard for Elliot as it was for him. It’s not the same, but–
“Hey,” Natalie says and pulls him into a hug.
Elliot’s food burns and Natalie quickly lets go to pull it off the heat, but there’s likely nothing salvageable about it now. Not that it was a culinary masterpiece in the first place, but now half of it is black and crusty. Elliot turns off the stove and pushes the window open. He’ll have to accept that the last twenty-four hours were an absolute disaster and move on with his life.
“I’m so glad you brought food,” Elliot says and peers into the bags Natalie put on the counter. It’s from their favorite place and it looks like she got them a generous amount of dumplings. “You’re the best.”
“We can have them with…”
“Extremely charred vegetables and chicken? Yeah, sounds delicious.”
Natalie cackles and grabs them plates. “You’ll get there. Next time you’ll know which pans to use and maybe you can banish your girlfriend to the living room, so she
